Swedbank Cuts 600 Jobs in Plan to Trim Costs in Sweden, Baltics

By Adam Ewing -
Dec 13, 2011

Swedbank AB (SWEDA), Sweden’s largest
mortgage lender, is cutting 600 jobs in the Nordic country and
the Baltic region in an effort to reduce costs.

“This is part of the restructuring that we announced in
the third-quarter report, to have lower costs in 2012 than this
year,” Johannes Rudbeck, head of investor relations at
Swedbank, said in a phone interview. “There will be about 300
jobs made redundant in Sweden and 300 in the Baltics with a cost
of about 330 million kronor ($48 million) in the fourth
quarter.”

Swedbank said the number of full-time employees fell to
16,813 during the third quarter. European financial companies
have cut 127,073 jobs so far this year as banks reduce costs to
meet higher capital demands, according to Bloomberg data.

The Stockholm-based lender reported a third-quarter net
income of 3.48 billion kronor from 2.59 billion kronor in the
year-earlier period.